Asia Pacific

Customer success story: Hoar Construction

Hoar Construction, a large Alabama based general contractor, adopted PlanGrid for their NEA Baptist Hospital project. PlanGrid was able to save Hoar Construction over a million dollars on this 770,000 square foot, $175 million project.

$294k

rework savings

$479k

time savings

$23k

paper savings

Time Savings

Hoar Construction started this project in March 2011 with paper-based document control. However, midway into the project, they realized that their paper-based workflow was incredibly difficult to maintain and began looking for a way to replace it with something more efficient. After a short evaluation period, Hoar Construction deployed PlanGrid as a document control solution and had spectacular results.

To get our time savings data, we conducted a survey of Hoar Construction personnel asking how much time using
PlanGrid, instead of paper plans, saved them personally. Thirteen members responded, and on average they said
that they saved 11 hours, 9 minutes per person every week. This is pretty amazing when you consider that 11
hours is more than 25% of a regular full time work week. Multiplying these time savings by salary data resulted in a net savings of $478,872 per year for the thirteen users combined.

“After 27 years of having paper documents in the field, in carts, or print shacks, PlanGrid has saved me hours a day by not having to go to back and forth to retrieve documents. Now I can spend more time in the field and less time in the office trailer.”

David R. King

Former Project Superintendent

Paper Savings

The paper budget for this project was $60,360. This number may seem high for those used to smaller projects,
but when a full set of hospital drawings cost $1,700 and a half set runs $875, the costs adds up quickly. Prior to PlanGrid, Hoar Construction printed 3 full sets and somewhere between 20 to 30 half sets of drawings. Since they’ve implemented PlanGrid, they proudly say they have stopped printing paper sets completely.

Rework Savings

Rework is one of the hardest things to measure, yet it’s huge impact makes it something that can’t be ignored. On large projects, rework is a constant and expensive problem. It is common for workers to build off outdated drawings due to the difficulty of printing and distributing constantly updated sheets. According to a PhD thesis written for UC Berkeley by Dr. Peter Pei-Yin Feng, the cost of rework directly resulting from “poor document control” can range anywhere from 0.12% to 0.72% of total project costs. This means that on a $175 million project like the NEA Baptist Hospital, on average they will lose $735,000 to rework directly due to building of outdated plans. PlanGrid’s automatic syncing, distribution, and versioning of new sheets eliminates this problem, resulting in large savings.

“[PlanGrid] has made me more efficient solely due to the amount of information available like RFI’s, submittals, OFE, schedules, and any other document I would need right at my fingertips. I can solve issues immediately with subs further eliminating rework.”

— David R. King, Former Project Superintendent

"This is the best tool I have ever been given!”

— David R. King, Former Project Superintendent

“PlanGrid allows me to answer most questions on the spot. This boosts productivity and allows me to spend more time out in the field. It streamlines creating punch lists, saving time and resources.”

— Tony Blass, Project Assistant Superintendent

“It’s an extremely useful tool to track the status of items that require attention. Being able to see punch stamps on the plans is a constant reminder that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.”

— Tony Blass, Project Assistant Superintendent

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Used on over one million projects around the world, PlanGrid is the first construction productivity software that allows contractors and owners in commercial, heavy civil, and other industries to work and collaborate from anywhere.